African American Studies Resource Guide: African American Studies websites

"The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a national research library devoted to collecting,
preserving and providing access to resources documenting the experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world." The site offers the following online content:

Afriterra is an archive of antique maps and books related to Africa. Their mission is the collection and preservation of the history of Africa, as recorded by maps. The collection includes maps in various languages of all regions of Africa, dating from 1482 to 1900. Many of the maps in this collection may be viewed on the website.

The Amistad Research Center was founded in 1966 by the American Missionary Association, with the mission of collecting original sources on the histories of America's ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans." The Center, which is now housed on the Tulane University campus in New Orleans, contains manuscripts of importance to the study of ethnic history and race relations in the United States.

Indiana University's Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) was founded in 1991. It is "a repository of materials covering various musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era," and it's mission is the "collection, preservation, and dissemination of materials for the purpose of research and study of African-American music and culture." Although some finding aids are online, the collection is not digitized.

This small oral history collection is part of the Low Country Digital Library, - one of the resources of the College of Charleston's Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program. The collection contains a "variety of oral history interviews, largely documenting African American experiences in the Lowcountry. Oral history projects include the Avery Normal Institute documentation effort and the Sea Island Preservation Initiative."

BlackPast.org includes an online encyclopedia, transcripts of over 125 speeches given between 1789 and 2008, over 100 primary documents, and links to dozens of digital archive collections. BlackPast.org originated as online project of Quintard Taylor, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington, and his graduate assistant, George Tamblyn, to post reference materials to supplement Taylor’s class lectures.

Produced by the Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, this website highlights the achievements of Dudley Randall, (1914-), who created the Broadside Press in 1965 in Detroit, Michigan. Despite a limited budget, Broadside Press published the major African-American poetry of the time. Randall sold Broadside Press in 1985 to Hilda and Donald Vest, who continue to run it.

This is part of the University of North Carolina's Documenting the American South project. It includes autobiographies, church documents, sermons, and histories. The texts present a history of how African Americans in the South "experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "It focuses [...], on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival."

Part of "American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History."

The Chicago Public Library is home to the Harold Washington Archives and Collections which documents the political career of the late Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first African American mayor.

The King Center was established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King. The website includes biographical information on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, as well as bibliographies of suggested readings.

Based at Stanford University, this project is "a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and the social movements in which he participated." At the website, you can find chronologies, King sound clips, biographical information, an online King encyclopedia, and more.

"What began in the early years of Howard University as a small collection of antislavery books and pamphlets is now one of the world's premiere centers for the study of the Black experience."

"Our Shared History" is part of the National Park Service's "Links to the Past" website. Its purpose is to gather all of the websites available through ParkNet that are related to African American heritage. Topics include the Underground Railroad and African Americans who fought in the Civil War.

Provides the full text of papers and images from the American educator, editor, and writer William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), held by the Special Collections and Archives within the W.E.B. Du Bois Library of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Part of the Library of Congress's American Memory, a project to digitize historic collections for the National Digital Library. Digital primary historical materials include papers of Frederick Douglass held at LC, materials related to Jackie Robinson's break through baseball's color line, and selections of slave narratives and 19th century pamphlets.

An online exhibit from the Library of Congress, covering the topics of Colonization, Abolition, Migrations, and the WPA.